Here’s an article from the Holland Sentinel. It’s called “Getting Treatment When It All Falls Apart”.
The article opens with the statistics:
In 2008, Ottawa County alone had four alcohol-related crash deaths. In one year, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office reported 206 car crashes involving alcohol, 54 injury crashes involving alcohol, and 686 suspected drunken driving arrests. In 2009, the Holland Police Department arrested 246 drunken drivers; 21 of the drivers were arrested at the scene of an accident.
At Holland Hospital’s emergency department, 507 admissions were alcohol related: domestic abuse incidents, drunken driving crashes, and alcohol withdrawals.
and
According to one local treatment center specializing in alcoholism, Ottagan Addictions Recovery, 32,850 people are alcohol or drug dependent out of Ottawa and Allegan counties’ combined population of 365,000. OAR serves about 25,000 people per year, what director Edgington called “the tip of the iceberg.”
And here’s what they mean by “treatment”:
Court ordered intervention
David said many new AA members start coming to meetings because they’ve been ordered to by the courts after a drunken driving conviction.
Holland District Court Chief Judge Bradley Knoll and Judge Susan Jonas implemented a sobriety court several years ago to give drunken drivers an alternative to jail.
“At the outset, it involves AA meetings five times per week, mandatory counseling, daily sobriety testing, random drug testing and random home visits,” Knoll said. [Emphasis mine.]
Relapses happen, and the defendants know they can be sentenced to jail time if they don’t follow the program.
Now, I don’t know where we’d get the stupid idea that people are coerced into attending AA meetings. For chrissake, no one’s putting a gun to anyone’s head, amirite?
March 5, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Around here Drunk Drivers are sentenced to an independant program and it costs anywhere between $800.00 AND $2000.00
So let’s ask the question. Given the choice between $800.00 to $2000.00 for an independant outfit of AA for a dollar a week, who would choose the independant program?
Bear in mind that Court ordered treatment anywhere is just going through the motions.
One day I asked my counselor, “If these programs are so goddamn great why am I back 4 times.
His response, “So when they finally send your dumb ass off to prison they can say they tried.
March 6, 2010 at 3:33 am
You get what you pay for.
March 6, 2010 at 4:36 am
What does that have to do with ‘The 12-step industry’?
It sounds like lazy, liberal bleeding heart judges are trying to keep people out of jail.
Since I don’t answer to the courts, I would gladly sign any one’s paper before the meeting, give them 20 dollars and tell them to have a drink on me.
The funny thing is, you retards constantly say ‘jails, institutions and death’ is a BS line made up by AA to coerce and brainwash people. Now you’re complaining because people who should be in jail are in AA.
Math is your worst skill, logic is a close second. It’s because you’re a female right ?
March 7, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Most AA sponsors are mentally diseased voyeurs whose power-tripping sponsorship probably drives far more newcomers back to the bottle than otherwise. The “tough love” they promote seems more sadistic than loving, and in AAs loaded language, “unconditional love” means the approval a newcomer gets when he’s been so thoroughly brainwashed he accepts he must attend something like a rap session at the asylum as his way of life. As Erasmus said, “The number of fools is infinite,” so its hardly surprising there are enough misfits in any town to give the impression AA is something more than a lunatic fringe of narcissistic voyeurs who prey on newcomers and claim to be helping one another stay sober.
March 6, 2010 at 7:46 am
AA and most of these programs that are based on AA are popular because it allows the politicians to appear “tough on crime”, yet compassionate. The programs cost the taxpayers little after the initial investment.
Win-win for the politicians.
March 6, 2010 at 8:10 am
Yes Ray. It was $2000.00 AA